MyBrick
One of the nice things about the WD MyBook is that the embedded Linux is easy enough to update, so installing an SSH daemon was one of the first things I did, and I’m so glad I did. The first sign of trouble was when the network shares on the MyBook suddenly became “read only”, or just disappeared. At first I thought perhaps the NAS device was overheating, but it was no hotter than usual and none of the vents were blocked. I could log in via SSH and shell around the system OK. The details under /var/log showed an interesting story. There was plenty of evidence that the hard drive was failing. Rebooting sometimes restored functionality for an hour or so. I even popped the device into freezer for 20 minutes, which seemed to make it stable for a little while longer. I knew, however, that I probably had less than 3 days before the device would completely collapse.
With SAMBA breaking down due to the recurring disk faults, I decided to rely on secure file transfer over SSH. The encryption overhead put more strain on the CPU, generating a bit more heat, so I dismantled the device and provided better air cooling. Over two days, through countless reboots, I managed to move 350Gb to my main machine. Finally, the device completely refused to respond, so I declared it dead.
So what about my backups? Yes, I had backups of almost everything that was on the failing hard drive, but unfortunately I don’t have a good catalogue. So finding out where the latest version of everything was located would be a painful task. The dying NAS had the latest copy of everything in one place, so making a complete copy of the NAS before it died would be far easier.
If I get my hands on another (non-WD) SATA drive, I might rebuild the device, just for fun. Meanwhile there’s a replacement terabyte NAS on the way. Also non-WD. I’ve learned that lesson.
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